When last year's 2-year stimulus grants run out in 2011, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) could end up with the lowest grant funding rates in its history. Last week, in his first budget defense as NIH director before a House of Representatives Appropriations subcommittee, Francis Collins was asked about the poststimulus problem.

ScienceNOW reported this week that the bald eagle comeback could come at the expense of other species, mammoth hemoglobin has been resurrected, the New Madrid quakes may not have been so colossal, and island reptiles are not speciating, among other stories.

A new report that urges the U.S. government to spend billions more on graduate education while scolding universities for not doing enough to attract and mentor the students who would earn those degrees flies in the face of current fiscal realities.

The improper disposal of a derelict gamma-ray research device at the University of Delhi has resulted in the death of a scrap-metal worker—and drawn scrutiny of how India's academic institutions handle radioactive materials.

ScienceInsider reported this week that the first cancer vaccine will soon hit the market in the United States and the U.S. National Institutes of Health has approved four stem cell lines, among other stories.

Since the idea of sequencing the Neandertal genome became more than a glimmer in a paleogeneticist's eye, some have asked, "Could we, should we, would we, bring this extinct human species back to life?" But for both technical and ethical reasons, experts say, bringing back a Neandertal is a pipe dream.

Everyone involved in the Neandertal sequencing project at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology stresses the teamwork involved in sequencing the Neandertal genome. And yet Richard "Ed" Green, the postdoctoral fellow in charge, still stands out.

About The Cover

COVER Three Neandertal bone fragments, approximately 40,000 years old, from Vindija Cave, Croatia (shown to scale). DNA extracted from these bones was used to generate a draft sequence of the Neandertal genome, which was then compared to the genomes of five present-day humans. See page 710 and www.sciencemag.org/special/neandertal/. Photo: Christine Verna/Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology